NEW RESOURCES

Islington Gazette: How a radical Kings Cross bookshop was HQ to McLibel and spawned Pride marches. “An exhibition celebrating 5 Cally Road’s role in radical politics goes on show this month, sharing people’s memories of marching against nuclear bombs, fighting for gay liberation and being spied on by undercover police. Housmans Bookshop and Peace News has been a centre for social change activism since it was opened in the heart of King’s Cross in 1959 by Vera Brittain.”

WDBJ: New website tracks traffic stops in Virginia. “With each traffic stop, state law requires the officer to collect, and the law enforcement agency to report, several pieces of information, including: the race, ethnicity and gender of the person who was stopped, the reason for the traffic stop and whether or not the officer, or the citizen, used physical force. Anyone can view the statistics online, and officials with the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services are now analyzing the data collected so far.”

Wyoming News Now: German POW news journals get digitized. “The state library just completed the digitization of 5 titles of German POW camp newspapers from World War 2. These newspapers were from the Douglas and Cheyenne war camps. They depicted camp life for prisoners, as well as news that was coming in from Europe at the time. Captured by allies in northern Africa, these prisoners were held in Wyoming, in several camps that were operational from 1942 to 1945.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

MIT News: Letter from President Reif: A new future for edX. “After a thorough and thoughtful process, and with the support of the senior leadership of MIT and Harvard, the edX board has agreed to sell the assets of edX to 2U, Inc., a publicly traded company that provides a platform for lifelong learning. Through this acquisition, edX will become a 2U subsidiary as a ‘public benefit company,’ which will allow edX’s long-standing commitment to the public good to be embedded in its new charter.”

9to5 Mac: ‘OldOS’ developer launches new website that gives classic macOS widgets a new life. “The same developer behind the now incredibly popular ‘OldOS’ TestFlight app for iPhone, Zane Kleinberg, is back with a new tool that lets you use classic macOS widgets through a web browser. Kleinberg explained how classic macOS widgets, first introduced in Tiger, were made entirely out of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This enabled him to revive several old Apple-designed widgets, including calculator, world clock, unit converter, stickies, and the tile puzzle.”

Vox: Google is starting to warn users when it doesn’t have a reliable answer. “Google is testing a new feature to notify people when they search for a topic that may have unreliable results. The move is a notable step by the world’s most popular search engine to give people more context about breaking information that’s popular online — like suspected UFO sightings or developing news stories — that are actively evolving.”

USEFUL STUFF

Search Engine Journal: Just Say No to Hackers: How to Harden Your WordPress Security. “In this column, you’ll learn how to harden your WordPress site against different types of vulnerabilities, though the scope of this article is wider and applies to all types of web applications.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Mashable: 5 trends that have shaped TikTok so far this year . “TikTok has been growing in popularity year over year, but for an app that’s been around for a while now it’s surprising just how many new trends are still popping up on it every day. We sorted through it all so you don’t have to. Here are five of the biggest trends that have shaped TikTok this year — so far.”

PC Magazine: Facebook, Google, TikTok, Twitter Pledge to Tackle Online Abuse of Women. “Four of the world’s largest tech companies have pledged to tackle online abuse and improve women’s safety. Facebook, Google, TikTok, and Twitter this week announced a set of commitments at the UN Generation Equality Forum in Paris, promising to build better ways for women to curate their safety online and enhance reporting systems.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Mozilla: Take control over your data with Rally, a novel privacy-first data sharing platform. “Today, we’re announcing the Mozilla Rally platform. Built for the browser with privacy and transparency at its core, Rally puts users in control of their data and empowers them to contribute their browsing data to crowdfund projects for a better Internet and a better society.”

Bleeping Computer: REvil ransomware hits 200 companies in MSP supply-chain attack. “A massive REvil ransomware attack affects multiple managed service providers and their clients through a reported Kaseya supply-chain attack. Starting this afternoon, the REvil ransomware gang targeted approximately six large MSPs, with thousands of customers, through what appears to be a Kaseya VSA supply-chain attack.”

OTHER STUFF I THINK IS COOL

New York Times: Is This Some Kind of Code? You Can Solve the …. “In a 2015 paper, ‘Fun With Fonts: Algorithmic Typography,’ the Demaines explained their motivations: ‘Scientists use fonts every day to express their research through the written word. But what if the font itself communicated (the spirit of) the research? What if the way text is written, and not just the text itself, engages the reader in the science?’ Inspired by theorems or open problems, the fonts — and the messages they compose — can usually be read only after solving the related puzzle or series of puzzles.” Good morning, Internet…